New Go programmer here -- apologies if this is well worn territory, but my google searching hasn't turned up the answer I'm looking for.
Short Version: Can I, as a programmer external to the core Go project, force my packages to be imported with a specific name. If so, how?
Long Version: I recently tried to install the bcrypt package from the following GitHub repository, with the following go get
go get github.com/golang/crypto
The package downloaded correctly into my workspace, but when I tried to import it, I got the following error
$ go run main.go main.go:10:2: code in directory /path/to/go/src/github.com/golang/crypto/bcrypt expects import "golang.org/x/crypto/bcrypt"
i.e. something told Go this package was supposed to be imported with golang.org/x/crypto/bcrypt. This tipped me off that what I actually wanted was
go get golang.org/x/crypto/bcrypt
I'd like to do something similar in my own packages — is this functionality built into Go packaging? Or are the authors of crypto/bcrypt doing something at runtime to detect and reject invalid package import names?
Yes it's built in, I can't seem to find the implementation document (it's a relatively new feature in 1.5 or 1.6) however the syntax is:
package name // import "your-custom-path"
Example: https://github.com/golang/crypto/blob/master/bcrypt/bcrypt.go#L7
// edit
The design document for this feature is https://docs.google.com/document/d/1jVFkZTcYbNLaTxXD9OcGfn7vYv5hWtPx9--lTx1gPMs/edit
// edit
@JimB pointed out to https://golang.org/cmd/go/#hdr-Import_path_checking, and in the go1.4 release notes: https://golang.org/doc/go1.4#canonicalimports